"All this region is very level and full of forests, vines and butternut trees. No Christian has ever visited this land and we had all the misery of the world trying to paddle the river upstream." Samuel de Champlain

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Jessica Ernst is a public hero says Ingraffea

Photo: L'Oeil Régional
"Anthony Ingraffea now denounces fracking as an extreme and dangerous technology: "The industry is reaching into the deepest, darkest corner of its almost empty world hydrocarbon warehouse, and using an inelegant, inefficient, wasteful, bludgeoning process to keep itself alive, at the expense of exacerbating climate change." He places Jessica Ernst's lawsuit on a special pedestal because it has exposed the industry's Achilles heel: migrating gases from millions of leaky wells.

From the outset, industry denials have followed a similar pattern, Ingraffea says. "One: We didn't do it. Two: Prove it. Three: Silence. Maybe we did it, but we're not going to tell anybody." Ernst's case and her refusal to settle out of court have exposed the deception: "Number one, she caught the industry doing it. Number two, she's got the evidence to prove it, and number three, she won't be silent." For all of this, Ingraffea regards Ernst as a public hero."

I'm the second generation of my family that lives in Richelieu, Quebec, in Canada. My family tree, both from my mother's and my father's side, has its roots in Quebec since the beginning of the 1600s: my ancestors crossed the ocean from France, leaving Perche and Normandy behind them. Both French AND English are my mother tongues: I learned to talk in both languages when I was a baby, and both my parents were perfectly bilingual too.